


Submerged

by meanderingvoid (meanderingsoul)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Bad Sex, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Devotion, Disturbing Themes, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Season/Series 03, Size Difference, why yes you did read that pairing tag right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 07:26:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13677027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingvoid
Summary: She kept thinking when she was trying to think of nothing, thinking that if she could just keep Lash down long enough she could cut him open and peel Andrew free. All her knives were sharp enough. She’d beso careful.





	Submerged

 

They only had the six containment rooms, but they kept Lash in the hallway by himself, the quieter one with more cameras and less guards who might be perceived as threats.

Melinda didn’t think it’d make a damn bit of difference if he ever got out.

Coulson had asked her if it was going to be a problem, them keeping Lash here, where they all lived.

She’d said no. He’d said alright.

They’d both known it was bullshit.

*

Melinda had a suspicion she was still the only thing on earth that might make him _stop_.

He wasn’t in transition anymore, she knew he wouldn’t change if she just got him to _see_ her, but Lash had stopped for her to move out of the fight. He didn’t seem to want to hurt her, same way he’d only gone for Coulson after he’d tried to restrain him, same way he’d avoided Daisy.

That wasn’t why she kept watching him.

*

She didn’t always bring him dinner, but when she did she stayed and watched him eat.

Melinda wasn’t sure if it helped or hurt more, watching for any scraps of Andrew that were left in Lash like bits of glass on a beach.

Lash had eaten him from the inside out, an invisible evil in the biology like cancer or dementia, had eaten Drew’s memories and personality and wants and needs long before she’d finally seen how it was eating his body.

Lash stabbed at a bean. He never looked directly at her when she watched him, just kept her in his peripheral vision. This was mostly a fend for yourself kind of base, but they’d found it more practical over time to make sure there was at least one big, hot meal available a day. Kept things running.

She noticed after a while how he was struggling with the fork, the cheap metal too thin to grip with clawed fingertips and large hands.

The next time she brought a big serving fork she’d found left in the kitchen instead.

He looked at her, _Lash_ looked at her, a long look with odd dark eyes she didn’t see blink.

She stared back.

*

She kept thinking when she was trying to think of nothing, thinking that if she could just keep Lash down long enough she could cut him open and peel Andrew free. All her knives were sharp enough. She’d be _so_ careful.

Somewhere in her mind wanted to think he was just trapped, buried. That she could still get to him. That she could _help_.

Melinda knew that wasn’t how any of this worked. She’d known it since Bahrain.

*

She turned to leave the tray behind in the containment module. She’d let herself back in after he’d taken it, watch from inside.

Lash put his hand on glass.

She startled but didn’t move. Couldn’t. Staring out she saw him blink once. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, but he was looking at her face.

“Do you know who I am?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

Talking seemed difficult for him, sharp teeth and a different tongue. His voice was too deep, rough and rounded.

Melinda left without running.

*

She made herself not go see him for days. She was busy, but that wasn’t why. Knowing for sure part of Andrew was still in there made it all harder. Not harder to cope with, this situation was already as bad as it was going to get in most ways.

Harder to _resist_.

*

Next time she opened the door.

She’d looped the surveillance feed, knew the routes of the guards. She’d designed the patrol routes for the whole damn base actually, though they were changed over time in little ways.

She let herself in and Lash stayed seated, waiting and watching her in his peripheral vision like he always did.

Melinda sat next to him while he ate, a few feet away while the food vanished in quick, careful bites. Her heart wanted to race so she worked to breathe silently, kept a small bit of the flesh of her cheek held tight between her eyeteeth.

This was stupid. And risky. Coulson would figure it out eventually no matter what she did. She shouldn’t be doing this.

Lash’s jaw didn’t move quite how you’d expect.

They didn’t talk.

*

Melinda cried herself to sleep again.

Coulson must have heard her because he cooked her breakfast, eggs just how she liked. He didn’t try to talk to her or touch her though. He knew as well as she did that she wouldn’t be able to take it today.

*

She came in to sit with him every few days. She couldn’t make herself stay away more than two days at a time. Melinda just needed to see it for herself, whatever it was she was looking for.

“Are you bored?” she asked. She hadn’t spoken to him since the hand on the glass.

“No.”

“There’s not much for you to do.”

“I listen.”

She realized what he meant with a horrible sinking feeling. “You can still hear them. From in here.” Lincoln was upstairs. Daisy.

Lash nodded slowly. His hair on his skin didn’t make a sound like it should.

“Does it still hurt?” He’d said it hurt him, in the mix of half-logical thoughts he’d shared when she was realizing whatever had happened had put Andrew out of his mind.

Lash stared at the floor, perfectly still with the same oversized fork she always brought held loose in his hand.

He could use it to kill her of course, but why would a fork make any difference with the other skills Lash had available to him? And he didn’t want to kill her.

“I’m sorry,” she said

Lash looked at her sideways. “I can wait.”

*

Melinda spent half the night reworking the response plan for if Lash got out and making better escape routes for Lincoln, Elena, and Joey who he would seek to kill.

*

The next time he stood up when she stood to leave.

He’d always stayed seated. The materials of the rooms didn’t let him cut a portal out. She’d watched him try. Either he didn’t want to seem to be threatening them or he didn’t see the point.

Lash always sat quietly until she was gone.

He slowly set one big hand against the side of her neck and face.

It wasn’t warm, more the same temperature as the air in the room. The skin was too stiff and too smooth, a heel instead of a palm.

Lash rubbed the bent knuckle of one finger under here eye. She knew the skin there was dark and thin, too puffy to hide with makeup anymore. He’d curved his fingers to keep the dark claws from touching her skin.

“I’m tired,” she said. She didn’t say Andrew or Lash. One word was hope and one was despair and she couldn’t settle on either one yet.

Lash’s face, large and stiffened by extra bone, so little of Andrew’s features left, twisted into a resigned frown. “Sleep more.”

She went to stone. After a moment he moved away and sat down.

She left in a daze, triple checking the locks on autopilot.

The was a warmer voice in her head chiding her to rest, to sleep in, to not be in such a hurry to get up to run, to get more sleep, to stay in bed.

How much of him was left?

*

Melinda had always dreamed in disconnected, brightly colored images, flashes of people and places that never mimicked a story.

Lately she sometimes saw Lash shudder back into Andrew under her hands, her own thin, scarred fingers on bluish hide then on warm, brown achingly familiar skin.

She knew it was stupid. Andrew’s mind had started warp as soon as he’d broken free of the husk, branches broken under the weight of the ice encasing them.

That wasn’t enough to shut up the _maybe_ in her head.

*

It wasn’t fatalism or disloyalty or hate or whatever people thought about why she’d taken the chance she’d kill him when she pulled that trigger.

They’d all made different vows to each other.

For whatever bullshit reasons only they’d ever understood, Coulson had promised Andrew to protect her. He’d never been dumb enough to promise _her_ that.

She’d promised Coulson her care and protection. She’d promised Andrew for better or worse.

But he’d died without her there. When she became the worse, she’d walked away.

Melinda didn’t pretend she’d fulfilled her vows.

But Andrew’d made other vows, ones involving phrases like do no harm and above all I must not play at God.

Prevention mattered more than cure. The cure was too often far too final.

Lash didn’t understand that.

Andrew would have.

*

There was something she kept watching for and Melinda wasn’t even sure what it was.

She knew he remembered her. She knew his personality was gone, transformed into something else.

But maybe it was more like those pictures she’d seen once, trees submerged in a lake, green water and leafless branches. Maybe they weren’t alive in the same way anymore, but they were still trees underneath.

There was something she was still waiting to see.

*

After she’d been hurt Lash rushed at her first time.

Wounds to the abdominal muscles and lacerations to the liver sucked. Her belly was still more on fire than not. Melinda still balanced up onto the balls of her feet ready to move like air, arms coming up to block.

Lash was slow, but powerful. She could probably evade him for a while, but if he hit her it’d break bone. There was no escaping the energy he used to rip people open. If this was it so be it.

It never crossed her mind to run.

He dropped to a crouch in front of her, pushed her jacket aside and slid a thumb under her shirt to lift it.

Her arms stayed raised for defense, but she’d realized what he was doing.

He’d smelled her blood when the module door opened.

The squares of bandages weren’t bloody. She knew she hadn’t popped any of the stitches. The base had gone quiet in the aftermath. She watched him stare at the gauze for a long moment before Lash’s massive head leaned against her torso lightly and she heard him breathe out.

She put her hands in his hair.

She used to sift Andrew’s hair between her fingers when he’d kept it longer on top, used to scritch over it with her nails when it was short. He’d used to kneel down and kiss her belly when they were, when they… Before.

It was the first time she’d touched Lash back, curled her fists around the too stiff, too smooth tendrils of hair. They shifted under her hands like something that should rattle, like quills or bamboo.

None of this was right. It wasn’t _right_.

He held still until she let go.

She sat next to him on the edge of the bed while he ate quickly and quietly and stared at their feet on the floor. There was more bone under the skin there too and his toes were somewhat clawed.

She left without a word.

Her hands hadn’t touched skin.

*

The next time he asked her, “Where is Daisy Johnson?”

Melinda didn’t answer.

*

Coulson had been right to make her go to him when he’d come to say goodbye, even though she’d been needed elsewhere, even though she’d been too angry and too hurt to want to at the time.

Andrew’d been more lucid. He’d been there with her, like it hadn’t been months since they’d…

_I don’t think this is going to work like we thought Melinda._

She was so damn grateful that wasn’t the last way she was going to hear his voice.

Melinda wished she’d kissed him. Over and over, she wished she’d just kissed him again before he was gone.

*

She dreamed and Lash’s flesh rippled and melted down and this time there was nothing underneath but air.

*

He’d already had dinner earlier when she came inside that night and he knew she knew it.

Lash stood up and she let herself shake this time, shudders running through her muscles and it wasn’t quite fear and it wasn’t really desire. Maybe this was closure, maybe just insanity. She was going to do it either way.

Melinda moved closer, put her shaking hands against his abdomen and her mouth against his chest.

Nothing happened to the skin under her fingers. She hadn’t really thought anything would, but she’d needed to see it for herself.

Lash picked her up like it was nothing, an arm curved under her ass and a hand under her shoulder, moved them into the furthest corner of the room, not that there was any privacy to be had in the stark bright white of this space, nothing except the time it would take for the base patrol to circle back around and the loop she’d put on the cameras.

She shifted in his grip to let him pull her pants down her legs, closing her eyes tight and grabbing his hair in both fists, arms around the stiff lines of his ribs.

She could tell he was hard, thicker and not quite the same shape, but she didn’t look, didn’t want to look, wasn’t particularly hot for this, just needed it. She needed to feel the difference, the difference in everything. Maybe then this would all seem real.

His hips were too wide for her to cradle without aching. She could feel the shifting as he licked his hand a few times to slick himself enough not to injure her. This was going to be too much too fast no matter what, but that was fine. This wasn’t about pleasure.

The pressure like this was still almost unbearable. Lash held tight around her hips and thighs and she couldn’t help but thrash, trying to stifle her howling against his chest. He sank in and it was like being ripped open all over again, like seeing him change the first time or the bullets hit his chest or when he’d told her to… She was wetter inside, it was easier to take the shallow rocking after a moment, her hips not even flush to his but she clung to him. She’d needed to know.

Her orgasm was a pitiful thing, rattled through her body more like surrender to exhaustion than pleasure. She was held open too much to squeeze down, couldn’t get enough air to make a sound, but afterwards her breaths started to sob, legs limp and hands tingling numb from where they gripped his hair.

Lash didn’t come, went soft quickly but she still thrashed a little and cried out when he pulled away from her. He moved to hold her over his hip almost like a child, but it was easier on her legs. She kept her eyes closed.

After a minute he leaned down over her, breathing in against the crook of her neck slow and deep like Andrew always had, holding her tight against him, tepid thick skin and strange eyes.

Melinda squirmed up and kissed him, her swollen mouth on firm lips. She cut the side of her tongue on his teeth when she licked inside. Lash was frowning when she pulled back, rubbed his thumb carefully over her bloodied mouth and wet face.

He’d known what she needed, been careful with her, but everything on his part had been desireless. Echoes of memories.

He set her back on her feet so carefully.

They both knew they wouldn’t do this again.

*

She let the water pound over her head in the shower like she’d used to do so often after Bahrain, trying to let the noise drown her thoughts, wash her head empty and quiet, nothing but clean bones.

It didn’t work any better now than it had then.

*

They knew where Hive was. They knew where Daisy was. Lincoln had a theory and they were out of options.

Melinda said yes.

But the only way this worked was with a quinjet, not the Zephyr. The quinjets were easier to hack, easier to program. There were more of them. It was what Daisy would go for, sway or no sway.

The quinjets didn’t have the same capacity to dock a containment module.

She didn’t really expect that to be a problem.

*

Lash was standing by the door when she let herself in.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Get Daisy,” he said and it wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. Come with me?” and she reached out her hand for his.

Lash watched her face while he wrapped his fingers around her hand, tucked his thumb into her palm.

She didn’t flinch this time.

With the lockdown and Talbot on base the hallways were empty while she led him to the quinjet, her grip tight on his hand. Not that she thought it would make much of a difference if he decided to make a break to go for Lincoln.

Melinda pretended not to feel a fingertip trace her knuckles.

“The quinjet’s going to be directed by Daisy to her and Hive’s location. They both think a different inhuman will be onboard. Taking out Hive is the priority, understand?” she said, but he looked more amused than anything else.

His free hand moved to squeeze her shoulder, smoothed down and squeezed gently around her arm right above the elbow, held, and it was so familiar she felt her expression crumble for a second despite herself.

“Do good. Then come back.” She hadn’t meant to say that to him and he didn’t respond.

But, just like her years ago, he only did half of it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was going to be a much less angsty, much more creepy fic for Halloween to go with Resuscitation. Instead I've just accidentally finished the damn thing on Valentine's Day. Figures.
> 
> Let me know what you thought <3


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